Japan stocks tumble into bear market territory
- published: 10 Feb 2016
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Japanese shares have continued their slide, falling almost 7% in two days and entering bear market territory. Tokyo\'s Nikkei 225 dropped sharply by another 2.3% to close at 15,713.39, adding to Tuesday\'s 5.4% tumble. The index has lost more than 20% since mid-2015, meaning that it entered a bear market as investors lost their confidence. Latest concerns have been fuelled by a strengthening of the yen, which is expected to hurt exports. The worry is that the currency is seen as a safe haven in an insecure regional economic context. If the yen keeps appreciating, it could hurt companies\' international competitiveness and cut into the export sector\'s profits. Andrew Walker, World Service economics correspondent Once again the financial sector took the full force of the storms in Tokyo. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial has lost 15% this week and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial is down 13%. It\'s certainly true that the recent growing unease about the global economic outlook and the consequent financial market turbulence does have the potential to affect the banks more than many other sectors. But has the sell-off in financial stocks been overdone? Judging by the performance of the European markets so far on Wednesday, some investors do seem to think so. Deutsche Bank, the focus of European anxiety managed to gain more than 10%, but then it is still down a lot from the New Year. It leaves us with a great deal of uncomfortable uncertainty about where the financial world is heading. What we can say for sure is that the clouds that gathered during the financial crisis are still with us...
